“I’m half an hour late, I’ll come back tomorrow.“

This Fall’s series of “Break-a-Brush!” painting workshops featured the Impressionists as our inspiration. Sprinkled throughout the workshops, some of their words, as well as their paintings, kept us company. Here’s a personal, perhaps somewhat quirky, list of favorites they are purported to have said:

Claude Monet

“Colours pursue me like a constant worry. They even worry me in my sleep.”

“I am only good at two things, and those are: gardening and painting.”

“I’m half an hour late, I’ll come back tomorrow.“

Edgar Degas

“Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.”

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

“So that’s the telephone? They ring, and you run.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.”

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

“It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.”

Mary Cassatt

“I have touched with a sense of art some people – they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?“

“If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and colour.”

“I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.”

 Berthe Morisot

“A love of nature is a consolation against failure.”

“My ambition is limited to capturing something transient.”

“Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.”

Paul Cezanne

“We live in a rainbow of chaos.”

“It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.”

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”

Not, perhaps, a comprehensive review of what was a very disparate “group” of painters, however one might define “Impressionist” (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat etc being post-impressionist). Certainly missing some other names including Manet (who never actually exhibited with them eh!) Pissaro, Caillebotte, Bazille, Sisley, the list goes on.

Who’s your pick of the crop? Let me know your favourite quotes!